What are the Australian health services like?
Australia is among the most advanced countries in the field of medicine and is noted for its highly trained medical staff and modern hospitals equipped with the latest high-tech apparatus. Two yardsticks widely used to measure the quality of a country’s healthcare are the infant mortality rate (five deaths for every 1,000 live births) and life expectancy (84 years for women, 79 for men), which are both among the ‘best’ in the world.
In stark contrast to ‘white’ Australians, the health of indigenous Aboriginal Australians is much worse and life expectancy is much lower, e.g. around 59 for men.
Healthcare services are provided by both government (including Commonwealth, state, territory and local governments) and private organisations. Australia has a national health system called Medicare, which provides free or subsidised medical care and free hospital treatment in public hospitals for all permanent residents (plus certain visitors) irrespective of their age, health status or income. The public health system is supplemented by a wide variety of private clinics, hospitals and practitioners, plus a range of voluntary agencies and non-profit organisations.
The country spends around 10 per cent of its GDP on healthcare (compared with some 15 per cent in the US), which is around average for OECD countries. Despite the rising cost of modern medicine, costs have largely been contained in the last 15 years. Health facilities and doctors are unevenly distributed in Australia; however, the major cities and urban areas have a surplus of GPs, while in most country areas there’s a shortage, particularly in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Trying to persuade doctors to relocate from the cities to remote country and outback areas is a major problem, which the government is trying to overcome by importing doctors specifically to work in country areas. The Royal Flying Doctor Service provides medical services in remote country areas and evacuates urgent cases to hospital.
Recently, there has been a growing emphasis on preventive medicine and community care, including education programmes to promote a healthy lifestyle. Alternative medicine and natural remedies are popular in Australia, where acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy and physiotherapy thrive.
Voluntary euthanasia is a topical subject in Australia, particularly since the world’s first voluntary euthanasia law was passed in 1995 in the Northern Territory. This was subsequently overturned in 1997 by the federal government after four people had been medically assisted to die. In most states, patients can refuse life-sustaining treatment, but doctors cannot assist them to die (although in reality many doctors do ‘assist’ terminally-ill patients).
For more information see Living and Working in Australia by David Hampshire
